Russian nightclub fire kills 109

Published on Saturday 5 December 2009 18:53

RUSSIA was yesterday mourning the victims of its worst fire disaster since the fall of the Soviet Union after 109 people died in a nightclub blaze.

Officials last night were investigating why so many people lost their lives at a popular venue in the Urals city of Perm, many of them crushed in a rush for a single exit.

Investigators believe the blaze began when fireworks were set off inside the club, hitting the ceiling, which was covered in decorative twigs and plastic sheeting.

Mobile phone footage broadcast on Russian television showed clubbers dancing as sparks ignited the ceiling around midnight on Friday.

Last night President Dmitri Medvedev, who in the last year has been leading a drive to improve Russia's notoriously poor fire safety record, said the club's owners had "no brains and no consciences".

He was speaking after being told the firm that owned the venue, called the Lame Horse, had already been fined twice for failing to meet fire safety requirements and was due to be inspected again tomorrow. Perm police said the club's owners had been arrested shortly after the blaze on the main highway out of town.

Medvedev, speaking in a broadcast conference with senior officials, said the club owners were "absolutely indifferent to what happened. And, as if that was not enough, they ran away".

Police said they were still looking for another four suspects in connection with the blaze.

Sergei Shoigu, the veteran rescue expert who heads Russia's ministry for emergency situations, said the club had completely burnt down "as a result of the use of fireworks, which should never have been used under any circumstances".

Firefighters took just a minute to reach the scene of the blaze after they were alerted by an injured man turning up at one of their stations, which was directly opposite the club. It took them an hour to put the fire out, it was reported.

Survivors and families of the victims yesterday firmly pinned the blame for the fire on the club's decorated ceiling.

"The fire took seconds to spread," said Svetlana Kuvshinova. "It was like a dry haystack. There was only one way out. They nearly stampeded me."

Leonid Miroshnichenko, who lost his daughter in the fire, said the plastic ceiling contributed to the death toll. "I would like to see the official who allowed this club to open. It was he who killed my daughter," he said.

Footage, taken by clubgoers, showed the fire spreading through what appeared to be willow twigs as a host shouted without urgency: "Ladies and gentlemen, guests of the club, we are on fire. Please leave!"

The video showed people reluctantly heading toward the exit, some of them turning back to look at the burning ceiling. Within seconds they started rushing away in panic as flames began to spread faster.

"There was only one exit, and people starting breaking down the doors to get out," said a woman who identified herself as Olga, her fur coat smeared with soot. "They were breaking the door and panic set in. Everything was in smoke. I couldn't see anything."

Russian medical officials said 98 people had died in the club and another 11 in hospital. A further 130 people were being treated for their injuries, some in hospitals in Moscow and St Petersburg.

Forensic experts said they were having difficulty identifying some of the remains and were still not able to give a full list of fatalities. Relatives bussed to Perm's morgue yesterday were so upset some were barely able to speak. Only 68 victims had been named by last night. Many relatives waited for hours at the Perm morgue, not knowing whether their relatives were among the dead.

"I'm simply devastated, I can't believe it's happening to me," said Yevgeny Porfiryev, his eyes red from tears after he found the body of his 26-year-old son Timur at the morgue.

The fire is by far the worst to hit Russia in the past 20 years, despite a record far worse than those of much of the rest of Europe. Many Russians are tired of the terrible toll of fires, often caused by private firms seeing regulations designed to prevent them as nuisance red tape inherited from the old Soviet Union.

Some 18,000 Russians a year die in fires with safety rules often unenforced and safety precautions ignored. Medvedev last year ordered new fire alarms put in all care homes after the country's previous record disaster, when 67 died in a nursing home blaze in 2007.

This weekend's disaster came as Russia was still on edge following last week's bombing of the high-speed Nevsky Express passenger train midway between Moscow and St. Petersburg, which killed 27 in the first deadly terrorist attack outside Russia's Caucasus republics since 2004. Chechen Islamists claimed responsibility for the blast.

Packed nightclubs have previously turned into deathtraps. In 1981, 48 people died when a blaze broke out at the Stardust club in Dublin. Another 100 died in a similar fire at the Station club in Rhode Island, United States, in 2003.

The worst ever such disaster happened at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, in Boston, in 1942, where 492 people lost their lives and hundreds more were injured.